


Spare Just a Day

by quietrook



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Past Character Death, discussion of grief parent death addiction etc, family stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-25
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-01-31 11:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18590284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietrook/pseuds/quietrook
Summary: It's Niall Lynch's birthday, and all of the Lynches end up gathering at their childhood home to remember.





	1. Prologue: It Rings in the Evening

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Raven Cycle Big Bang, 2019! A big thanks to Chloe for beta-reading and to Spoon for doing art for the fic!
> 
> optional but encouraged listening: funeral bell by phildel

Twilight fell over the Barns, the soft cover of night being pulled gently over the fields like a mother tucking a small child into bed. Lightning bugs danced around the perimeter of the land, winking in and out of existence as the sun made itself scarce. It was slowly disappearing below the horizon, exuding a sleepy sigh carried by the wind. Two cars sat in the driveway of the farmhouse, neither of them parked particularly straight. The first, a shiny new silver Volvo, immaculately clean; the other, an older black BMW. Next to each other, they created mirror images that reflected back off of the chrome. Something that was loved and meant to be inherited, something that was superficial and meant to be discarded for another temporary thing later on. Something that was painfully and awfully true, something that was painfully and wholly deceitful. 

These chosen cars perfectly encapsulated their owners, two brothers that stood next to each other as they each contemplated the Barns in silence. At a first glance, they looked like polar opposites. The taller of the two bore a shaved head, the back of his skull framed by the sharp outlines of a dark tattoo stretching from an unseen place on his back. His clothes were more than lightly distressed, and his boots looked like they were made for stomping. The older of the two wore a navy blue suit, creased in all the right places and nowhere else. Looking at him, it was easy to believe he had never considered getting a tattoo in his life, and his curly hair had been neatly combed and styled back to give him an air of professionalism. It was unlikely that anyone who didn’t know them would be able to accurately guess which of the two dealt with hardened criminals on a regular basis.

The brothers hadn’t agreed to come here together, but they had both showed up at precisely the same time anyway, car following car on the solitary road down. It seemed that Declan and Ronan Lynch, without communicating this thought to anyone else, had both decided to visit their childhood home on the day of their late father’s birthday. Declan’s expression was carefully guarded, and would have been even without  Ronan beside him. Ronan’s expression looked like it was meant to be unfathomable, but he could not hide the pain in his eyes. The way his fists clenched with a feeling that was nearly indefinable only betrayed his heart even more. Ronan was, as always, honest and true; even when he was trying his hardest not to be. Declan, in contrast, had spent so much time shoveling dirt over his true thoughts and feelings that he had no idea how to dig them up again.

It was Ronan who moved first, the sound of his boots on twigs and gravel shattering the stillness of the moment. Declan was left to follow after, as he always had, keeping an eye on his younger brother from a place removed from the action. Ronan still had his house key on him at all times; this wasn’t any sort of revelation for Declan, but it was comforting to know that all three of the surviving Lynches had kept home close to them since being evicted. The key hung comfortably on Ronan’s carabiner, next to his rosary ring keychain and the key to the BMW, all clinking together in harmony. He left the door open for his older brother, who followed after a brief pause.

Inside the house, the rooms were quiet, museum exhibits frozen in time despite the fact that they had all returned home by now at one point or other. All of Ronan’s friends and both of his brothers had been to the Barns multiple times in the past few months, but it managed to look completely untouched, a still life in oil that they were walking into and disturbing. It was far too quiet. When the Lynches had all been alive and living in the farmhouse, it had never once been this silent; there had been the sound of brothers fighting and playing, the sound of domesticity manifesting in clinking dishes and washing laundry, the sound of conversations and songs and instruments and stories. Now, the need to do household chores was long since past, and the only stories left were the ones that the three Lynch brothers were living out separately. Though their paths were beginning once more to entwine, there was still a canyon between each of them that would not be traversed easily. 

Declan, the oldest, had the longest and most complicated history with the house. He tried not to think about it as he stood there in the entryway with Ronan, but the thoughts came unbidden to his mind and he couldn’t push them away. He wondered what Ronan saw here, and how it had felt for his younger brother to come back to the Barns for the first time. He had been from home away far longer than the eldest Lynch had, after all. Declan had never had any choice but to go back there again and again, and he had resented it nearly every time. He doubted Ronan would ever be able to understand that feeling; he had probably never thought of The Barns as a place where bad things could happen before Niall died.  _ What a luxury that must have been, _ Declan had thought before, feeling guilty almost as soon as he had. He knew it wasn’t that simple. All of the surviving Lynches had their own issues with the Barns, and none of them were actually easier than the others despite what Declan had often felt.

It was an irrefutable fact, however, that Declan had never felt completely at home at the Barns. He had been aware for a very long time that he was not like the rest of his family; half of them were dreamers and the other half had been dreamt by the former. He was neither, a hybrid between dreamer and dream. It had taken Declan far too long to realize that this difference did not make him an outlier; instead, it made him extraordinary in his own right. If only it were possible to go back in time and explain that to a much smaller Declan Lynch. All of the Lynches were so stubborn that he would never have believed it, anyway, but the concept was nice. People weren’t supposed to dwell on the past, but it was a vice Declan indulged in far too often. It was the vice from which all other vices stemmed, like tributaries from a river nestled high in the mountains.

He had tried to make a rule, once, not to look back, but every time he found himself right back where he started: parked in front of the house he had grown up in, facing everything he had been trying to leave behind. Yes, Ronan and Matthew had been prohibited from coming home; Declan had, too, but it was a rule that he could not afford to follow. Months and months ago, in the middle of an argument, Ronan had made a comment about how Declan acted like he didn’t care if they ever went home; Declan had only smiled ruefully in return. If Ronan only knew.


	2. Declan: More than I've Got to Give

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the past, Declan walks through the house and feels.

Declan Lynch had been back to the Barns many times after his father’s untimely but not wholly unexpected death. It was the nature of his inherited legacy that forced him to do so, as the magical artifact market did not care that his father had been murdered in cold blood. They demanded more of Niall’s unique curations regardless. Declan, knowing full well the truth of his father’s methods, had no choice but to fill the enormous shoes Niall had left behind. So it was that Declan had found himself tasked with making his way to the Barns periodically to catalogue his father’s  _ works _ , so to speak. During these trips, he would keep his mind clear and stay goal-oriented: find something magnificent, something wondrous enough to keep the wolves away from his brothers for the time being. Find something, get it sold. That was all he had to do.

Despite the fact that he had to come back to the site of his father’s dreaming and death for this and only this reason, Declan had been back at other, more unnecessary times. He would be driving home from a social gathering, from fighting with Ronan, from Nino’s, from church, from any number of locations and events -- and he would find himself on the familiar dirt roads out in the more rural areas of the valley, down that long winding road that led straight to the Barns and never anywhere else. He would pull into the gravel of the driveway, and sit with his car in park for what felt like hours each time, looking at the house he had grown up in. He would wonder what it had been like for Ronan to find their father, beaten and bloody by the BMW; he tried each time not to think about how he should have been there first, how  _ he _ should have found Niall instead of his younger brother, and each time he failed.

Niall’s murder had been an intimidation tactic meant for Declan and Declan alone to discover; the eldest Lynch, the one taken along on business trips and back alley deals, the only other person who would undoubtedly know the whereabouts of the Greywaren if Niall would not tell. A weaker link that Niall Lynch’s death was supposed to exploit and break. As expected, in the aftermath of the discovery, Declan had broken, but a Lynch never fell apart the way other people expected them to. He had sewn his pieces together into something resembling a man, a poorly tailored human suit, to fulfill the role his father had given him: international black market dealer; protector of his brothers; liar; keeper of secrets.

His off-duty visits to the Barns were yet another lie, yet another secret. After the obligatory mourning period spent sitting behind the wheel of his Volvo, bottle in hand and whiskey on his breath, Declan would shut the car off and step out. His shoes, expensive Italian leather, crunched on the driveway; they had been made for durability as well as appearance, for comfort on expensive hardwood or carpeted floors, but certainly not for walking around on a farm. He’d pass right by the farmhouse, knowing already that he would go there last, just before he left. Some nights, against his better judgement, he would even sleep there.

First, though, he would walk for what seemed a disproportionately long amount of time across the fields to one of the barns his father in which had often laid dreaming. He’d stand by the doors, trying not to imagine lazy Sunday afternoons where his father crept into the loft and slept. In this, as in all family matters, Declan always failed, and the hole in his chest hollowed itself out even more. He would enter the barn, and shut the doors behind him, outside light unnecessary. Will o’ the wisps in their purest form floated around the big, empty space, beckoning him as if there was anywhere more dangerous than his own heart. 

Ignoring them, Declan would instead step carefully around furniture, over small geographical anomalies, and past curtains of impossible snow and sunlight to a far corner of the barn. It was a small area in comparison to the rest of the place, but it was big enough for him; it held a couch that looked antique, its upholstery covered in fabric pills and dust that could never be blown off. It was a shade that, when he had first seen it, had viscerally reminded Declan of himself - a lowly saturated green, something that might have once been mossy and vibrant but had dulled over time with neglect and carelessness. It was soft enough that he would be comfortable laying on it for hours at a time, but hard enough to keep him just on the edge of consciousness. He had learned, already, that any sleep he got in there would be fraught with nightmares that always ended in his gasping awake, reaching for someone that was not there and never would be again.

Next to the small couch was a cordless lamp, taller than Declan. It had taken him time to figure this one out; it turned on when the tune to a specific song was played. It was a folk song Aurora and Niall had sung the three Lynch brothers while they had been growing up. Upon discovering this, Declan had sank onto the permanently dusty couch and cried for what felt like hours. The ache of his father’s death and his mother’s incapacitation settled over him like the ashes of Pompeii, and smothered him until the tears would no longer come. For a little while after they stopped, he would sit on the couch, head bowed and hands clasped until his heart slowed down. Since this moment, he had been able to bear the weight of his grief more; as with everything else, Declan allowed himself very little margin of error. Every time he came back here, he would sit on that same couch and sing that same song, but the grief would stay bottled inside him, unable to escape. 

He would rise after the customary period of reflection, brushing thoughts away from his jacket like the specks of couch dust that clung to him, and walk away from the corner without another thought of hesitation. The time between sitting down and standing back up was extremely variable, and entirely contingent on the time of night, the amount of alcohol in his blood, and the proximity to Sunday morning. From this home base in the corner of the cavernous maw of Niall Lynch’s dreams, Declan would work outwards, looking at everything as its own little ecosystem. This was when he allowed himself to look at his father’s dreams without expressly thinking what might be sold at a high price, what might stave off the dogs of the magical artifact world, what might secure his brothers’ safety for a month or two more.

At times like these, Declan allowed himself to try to fully grasp the magic of the dream things. He would pick them up, if possible, and examine them from every angle until he had the secret. Some, he figured out the purpose to. Some, he figured out had no express purpose. More than either of those two, though, Declan was left befuddled, unable to decipher his father’s mind. Some things never changed. These moments always brought him close to tears, as well, though he found himself incapable of crying after so long of forcing his eyes to stay dry. He could only cry when the feelings weren’t real; all part of the act he had developed over the years. 

He always found himself wondering what things would be like if Niall Lynch hadn’t died; would they have the same strained relationship, with his father trying doing his best to relate to Declan while Declan did his best to let his father know it was far too late to try? The nature of Niall’s business in selling stories meant that things were always going to end the way they did, and Declan was always meant to deal with the pieces that were left over. There was never going to be any other outcome. No one was a master of their own fate.

His unplanned visits to the Barns would eventually end with him going back to the main house, having mentally re-catalogued the entire inventory of dream things with no purpose in mind other than to memorize how they did or did not fill the hole in his chest. When he walked through the front door, it was the first step in a long list of preparing to leave the Barns, as he always had to in the end. 

When Mount Vesuvius erupted and coated the entirety of Pompeii in volcanic ash, everything was perfectly preserved as it was; moments in time, left for the archaeologists to discover much farther down the line. Declan was that archaeologist now, trying to learn what the Lynches must have been like before they collapsed under the weight of all of Niall Lynch’s lies. He took his tools of discovery - his keys, his cell phone, the small handgun he had taken from Niall’s own collection - with him as he excavated what was left of his childhood home. 

The room closest to the front door was the living room where they had spent so many nights as a family, the brothers playing games, or gathered around to listen to Aurora and Niall sing. Declan had always wanted a voice like his father’s; low, even as it soared with lilting notes - a perfect complement to his wife. It never took long before Declan became overwhelmed by the way the perfect silence sat in a room where there had once been so much noise, and he would move on to another part of the house. Sometimes, it was the kitchen; he would stand in the center of it, looking through the window above the sink. The view of the fields stretched before him, the darkening of the night making the Barns seem a lot emptier than it really was. The outside, then, matched the inside.

Loving hands trailed across the surface of the counters and cupboards, noting every blemish they had acquired during the family’s history with fond recollection. The kitchen had hummed with life before, but even the appliances that didn’t require electricity had fallen asleep. Declan had never known how to feel about that; dream things were only awake as long as their dreamer was alive to keep dreaming them. It was one of the reasons he was so hard on Ronan for drinking and racing, but he couldn’t just say that if Ronan died, Matthew would fall into the same sedentary state as their mother.

Their mother. She slept unendingly in a room not far from the kitchen, but Declan would always save that room for the last. It was the hardest part of his visit, each time. As he walked past the doorway on his way to the stairs, he paused, thinking he might have heard something. A minute lying in wait told him it was just wishful thinking, and he swallowed the lump in his throat. Up the stairs he went. 

Matthew’s room was the smallest, having once been a fairly large closet. They had not been expecting him, and so had had to make do with what they had. Matthew had loved the room so well that they had never bothered with trying to give him another one. 

Declan’s room was nestled into the corner of the house, and had always been perfectly suited to him. It got colder in his room than the others, but he had never minded; the chill of winter was never as bad once he had experienced the coldness of men, and he had learned that at a very young age. Beside his room was Ronan’s; it was a large room that they had shared for a long time, filled now with so many of Ronan’s dreams. He never went into that one.

The bathroom the brothers had shared was still stocked with all of their toiletries, waiting for them as if they had all just been on a trip and were going to return at any minute. Handmade herbal soaps with rose and mint, shampoo designed not to ruin the texture of their hair, and each of their towels. The Lynches did not  _ look _ rich, to most people, because most things they owned were well-worn and far from fancy. Their money was all tied up in land or in complicated collections of magical items; there was money, of course, but it wasn’t evident in the way they lived. No one who didn’t know the Lynches would be able to tell that the Barns were relatively new, not passed down through generations.

Declan also forgot that the Lynches had not always lived in Virginia, because Niall had so fully cemented the Barns in all of their collective memories that he could not imagine any of them anywhere else. His father had had an obvious accent, but it didn’t matter; the valley had always seemed like his place of origin. It was almost as if, instead of Niall making Virginia home for himself and his family, Virginia had made itself a home in them. 

There was only so much time he could spend wandering around a house he had lived in for almost eighteen years, and Declan would find his thoughts straying too much to avoid turning to go back downstairs. This was where his journeys would often end - inside the room where his mother slept eternally. As much as it pained him to see her, he could never leave without saying hello or, really, good-bye. The doorknob was nearly always cold to the touch, and he didn’t know if it was his imagination or not. Turning it, he held his breath as he walked into the room. The air was stale, and a soft light from the lamp in the corner spread across the room. This was not an object dreamt by his father, and Declan kept light bulbs in the fixture so that, in the impossible event of his mother waking, she would not wake in darkness.

It was wishful thinking; the kind of hope only someone who had all but given it up could hold. Empty, but he had to do it anyway. 

A chair he had pulled from elsewhere in the house rested by her bedside, hard and uncomfortable. This was because Declan did not want to feel relaxed in this position, knowing he would not be able to force himself to leave her each time if he was too comfortable. The back was straight, and there was no cushion between him and the hardness of the wood. When he sat down, a heavy feeling settled across him. If not for the steady motion of breath, Declan would think his mother was dead. In the time before Niall’s death, she had never once been so still or so lifeless.

Silence, as the newer patriarch of the Lynch family looked down at his comatose mother. Silence, as he tried in vain to think of something to say, and silence as he felt foolish for even bothering. He had read, once, that hearing was the last of the brain’s functions to leave and so it was never a waste to try speaking or singing or whatever, but it didn’t change how empty it felt to talk to someone who could not respond. It was like talking to the wall. Besides, who knew how dreamt people worked? Did they function the same way humans did on even a molecular level? Silence, as Declan wondered once more how human his mother was, his brothers, himself. 

Human enough.

Human enough, and so Declan would open his mouth and speak. Apologies, for the way things were and the way he was acting. Promises to be better that he knew he couldn’t keep, and promises to find a way to fix things that he wasn’t sure if he could fulfill. Three words, aching and whispered as he closed his eyes, brows furrowed. Some nights, this would be the end of his time spent there, telling himself he was busy and this was not productive. Other nights, he would remain even after that. He would sing the songs his mother had loved - folk songs both Irish and otherwise; oldies; country; classical and renaissance, though he did not have the skill to do them justice. He would sing until he no longer could, then he would say his goodbyes and leave.

Now, Declan looked at the wood panelling of the door to that room, clearly visible from the living room where he and Ronan were standing. Aurora was no longer there, sleeping without any hope of being woken; no, Aurora was long past gone now, and Declan knew it. He felt the sharpness of the realization that he had never gotten to say goodbye properly. Not to her, and not to his father. He had wondered before if it was possible to dream the same person twice, but he wasn’t willing to find out and he certainly wasn’t going to mention it to Ronan. Besides - she had already died, and dead things needed to say dead.

Everyone had already grieved more than enough. 


	3. Pancake Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, Ronan is uncomfortable and antsy and needs to keep his hands busy.

There was something about standing in the entryway of his childhood home with his older brother that made Ronan feel decidedly unsafe. He came here all the time on his own and slept here most nights of the week, but everything felt different now that it was just Declan there with him. Vulnerable. It didn’t make sense - it was Declan’s childhood home, too, after all - but Ronan felt like he needed to protect it. As the sun sank resolutely beneath the hills, they stood at least five feet apart in the darkness of the house. Ronan had taken extra care to keep from brushing against his brother; he felt raw and dangerous, and didn’t trust himself to be in close contact with Declan. The night felt sharp, in a way that only Niall Lynch’s birthday could possibly feel.

When the Lynch brothers were younger, each of their birthdays was a day looked forward to with excitement and impatience. Their father always knew exactly what they wanted, even if it was a secret held in their head or clenched tightly in their fist. The present came, even when they were so sure he would have no idea, and they would be amazed and delighted. It would almost make up for his prolonged absences, but not quite.

Niall’s own birthdays passed more quietly, marked only by Aurora’s writing on the calendar. He was rarely present for any of them, as far as Ronan could remember; why should this one be any different? Another day to honor Niall Lynch, when he was not there to accept or acknowledge it. Ronan wondered if his brothers felt the absence as sharply as he had, and still did. He thought, hoped, that they didn’t, but Declan’s presence at the Barns was proof that at least the elder Lynch did. 

In the stillness of the March evening, Ronan stood in the living room that he had spent so much time in. Right now, it looked suspiciously lived in — blankets spilled out across the couch from nights that Adam had slept over, old quilts that had sat in their linen closet for months, years. It was cold, lately; Adam had first stayed in November, and the chill had only grown in the months since. Record lows, Ronan remembered the news saying, and thought it was fitting. A pillow was folded in half, wedged into the edge of the couch, and a mug still sat on the coffee table, resting on a cork coaster to protect the wood beneath it from rings. Ronan hadn’t even thought to put something beneath it, but Adam had. He took better care of Ronan’s home than Ronan did sometimes.

Adam, who was always so courteous and polite when visiting, a guest in his own home and in the homes of others. Ronan knew that the reasons why were less than good, but it was still something that had made him feel guilty on occasion. Should he be taking better care of things? Should he be more careful, make sure everything was properly cleaned and put away at all times? 

He almost wanted to bring it up with Declan, but as he turned to look at his brother, he saw the expression on Declan’s face. It was complicated, something that Ronan couldn’t decipher. Declan had always been like that, their whole lives, but Ronan had thought he was finally beginning to figure his older brother out. Apparently he had thought wrong. He had recently realized that while he had been going through things, so had Declan, and it was a hard cognitive adjustment he had had to make. He still didn’t know how he felt about everything. It had been a very hard pill for him to swallow, and it had stuck on the way down.

That was part of the reason that Adam had stayed over for so many nights. Ronan rarely spoke to him about Declan, and to his credit Adam rarely asked, but if that was the reason Ronan was upset they would stay up and talk into the night about any number of unrelated topics. Somehow, it helped Ronan process his issues with Declan silently. He still didn’t get how, but Adam helped.

Right now, though, all of those things he hadn’t said were buzzing around in his mind, begging for attention and the chance to speak. He saw, all at once, how much Declan had had to grow up when Ronan had been playing around in everything he did. He couldn’t believe he had never noticed -- except, he thought suddenly, he could. Declan was, unfortunately, every bit as good at lying as their father had been; he built disguises and wore them so well no one could see through them. Not even the people closest to him. Declan may have failed Ronan, but Ronan had failed him just as much in turn. 

The silence of the room and the chasm between them began to ache, and Ronan took a step forward. Though it had only been a small motion, Declan looked up at him quickly; they had both felt it. It was like the first crack of the ice in spring, when what was frozen started to melt. Soon something new and lively would spring up in between the cracks and bloom until the world was green and fresh. It was that growing that would hurt the most, and it was that growing that Ronan found himself afraid of.

Deciding that things were getting too heavy for him, he walked to the closest light switch and flipped it on with a satisfying  _ click _ . The warmth of the overhead ceiling light blinked instantly into existence, and he felt them both sigh in relief. With the light on, there were finally shadows enough for both of them to hide behind, and Lynches loved so much to hide. The only exception the the hard and fast rule appeared to be Matthew, but Ronan wasn’t even entirely sure about that. He didn’t want to think about it.

“Happy birthday, Dad,” Ronan muttered under his breath, and turned, surveying the room with his arms crossed across his chest. He was almost always defensive, wary of attack from all sides -- Declan’s presence only ensured this. 

He glanced over at Declan, and frowned; Declan had been looking at him, something he only knew with certainty because of the expression on his older brother’s face. It was neither pity nor bitterness, but was instead something in between the two that Ronan found much harder to deal with. He felt himself getting angry over this, and was even more frustrated that he was angry about it; he cast his gaze to the carpeted floor, his mouth twisting itself into a firm line. His emotions tended to find the easiest pathway to expression, and that pathway was often anger, but not today. Not today, he decided, and walked away, heading for the kitchen. He hadn’t eaten since lunch earlier with Gansey and everyone else. He was grateful they had all made plans to do something else, bringing Opal along with them; he needed the time alone. He suspected that either Gansey or Adam had something to do with the serendipity of the timing, but it was fine. He appreciated it either way. He wanted to be alone.

Or whatever the fuck this was. Ronan hadn’t counted on his brother showing up, and he didn’t know if he was glad that Declan had remembered the date or pissed off that Declan had come. They had never talked about it, but Ronan knew, or thought he knew, how Declan felt about their dad. He knew it was more complicated than it looked on the surface, but it still didn’t sit well in his chest. It was hard enough to live with the image of the Niall Lynch that he had known, let alone trying to juxtapose it with the one that Declan had grown up with. Which version was true? Which Niall had been real? He didn’t want to think about it, and he pulled the door to the refrigerator open with a little more vigor than was necessary. It swung out in a wide arc, cutting the air in its path. The house was cold, and the air from the fridge wasn’t doing anything to help it, but Ronan barely felt it.

“What do you want?” he called into the other room, staring at the contents of the fridge.

He needed to keep his mind busy, and that usually involved keeping his body busy; cooking, he had come to realize, was a much healthier way of venting that pent up energy than racing. Everyone he knew had agreed on that, too. He was overdue on getting groceries and the fridge didn’t have much in it, but it would be enough.

“What?”

Ronan tried not to let it show that he was startled; he hadn’t realized Declan had entered the room after him, and he was already on edge. He started adding more bricks to the wall between him and his emotions.

Making an irritated noise in the back of his throat, Ronan turned so that he could see Declan properly. He hated not being able to look at the person he was talking to, and he hated feeling watched.

“What,” he said, punctuating each word, ”do. You. Want.”

He waved his hand wildy at the open fridge to make his point. It didn’t get much clearer than that, but Declan’s face showed that he was still a little confused.

“I’m cooking,” he said finally, annoyed.

“I gathered,” Declan replied. 

“So do you want something or not?”

Ronan was extending an olive branch by even bothering to ask Declan, a fact that they were both very well aware of. It was the fact that Declan knew very well that this was a truce being called that was even  _ more  _ annoying; how was it that he barely knew the man standing in front of him, but Declan could still read him like a book? Weren’t they supposed to have both been ignoring each other for the past couple of years?

“Offer ending in 3… 2…”

“Pancakes,” Declan interjected, and then shook his head.

Ronan could tell he had just blurted out the first thing that popped into his head, but it was fine. He felt like making pancakes, so it was fine.

“Fan-fucking-tastic.”

He began to pull things out of the fridge, setting them in various places behind him on the countertops. Eggs, which he was running low on because he often made breakfast food at all hours of the day; milk, which was in about the same state; butter, which he somehow never managed to run out of. He tried not to be aware of Declan, close but out of sight, instead focusing on pulling measuring utensils that he wouldn’t use out of their places in cabinets and drawers. After too long of preparing in silence, he turned around, the pan he had just grabbed still in hand.

“Are you just going to stand there?”

This time, to his credit, Declan didn’t act like he wasn’t understanding what Ronan meant. He carefully and deftly rolled up the sleeves of his button down shirt, tucking the fabric into the crook of his elbow. At some point, he had turned on the kitchen light for them; Ronan had been too upset to think of it. He watched his brother approach the sink to wash his hands - something else Ronan had forgotten. He scowled.

“What about your watch?”

A smart watch sat delicately on his brother’s wrist, and Declan answered without looking up, “It’s waterproof.”

Of course it was. Why wouldn’t it be? There was nothing about Declan that was not perfectly polished, nothing that wasn’t fully and multi-functional. Nothing about him that could also be said of Ronan.

“Whatever. Bowls under the counter, utensils above, mix the dry ingredients for me.” 

In Ronan’s defense, he was used to cooking with Adam now and had just given out the directions habitually, not even thinking about it. Still, though, he deserved every bit of the edge in Declan’s voice when his brother responded, “Yeah, I grew up here, too.”

Ronan didn’t know how to respond, but he hoped his silence was apology enough. He whisked eggs together on his side of the kitchen, the silence between them broken only by the sound of utensils against bowls, of liquid sloshing and things being poured. Declan always measured when he cooked, broke out tablespoons and half-cups. Ronan preferred just to add things until it felt  _ right _ to him. These two contrasting qualities had never mixed well, and it was one of the sources of their constant conflicts - Ronan was never careful, and Declan was sometimes  _ too  _ careful. He didn’t understand it. He knew, now, that Declan wasn’t half as put together as he wanted people to think he was, and he  _ knew _ how reckless Declan could be. But then there was shit like this that made him think that he wasn’t so sure.

Declan was so much like Niall had been - as variable as the weather, changing in an instant so that Ronan could never be sure which one was the real one. It was enough to keep him guessing, and it occupied his thoughts even as he took the dry ingredients and added the liquid mixture to the bowl. Declan was staying a comfortable distance away from him, and he appreciated it; even after so much time of their relationship being strained, Ronan needed space.

He spooned pancake batter into the heated pan, the sound of the sizzle satisfying. It, at least, was something to fill the silence.

 


	4. Ronan: Where do my Good Deeds Lie?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan's journey to recovery post TRK and how he ends up at the Barns on his late father's birthday.

Ronan Lynch did not grieve quietly. There were those that would say with the utmost confidence that he did not do  _ anything  _ quietly, but they would be wrong; the truth of Ronan was that he did a lot of things that were never seen and never heard. Grief was not one of these things. Grief, Ronan did very loudly. 

For over a year, he had spent his life living in the cacophony of every bad decision he could make, all stacked up into one giant clusterfuck of a chord. He had sat in the middle of it all, a look of grim satisfaction on his face as he watched all the things he loved fall apart, one by one. It took him much longer than he wanted to think about for that satisfaction to morph into other feelings. Sharper feelings, ones that hurt if he thought about them and were still at least a dull ache when he didn’t. It wasn’t until his younger brother’s life was in danger that he really realized how much he had fucked everything up. 

It had been the kind of wake up call he had really needed, but loathed to say that he needed it. It was the kind of thing he considered a catalyst - the incident had burrowed into his chest, into his heart, and incited change. So he  _ changed _ , but he didn’t really think that was the right word for it. It felt more to Ronan like going back to something he had left, slowly returning to the way things had been before. It felt like a homecoming. He knew it wasn’t really that simple - he had so many things that he was still very far from repairing - but it was a start. 

One of the first broken bridges he set to trying to mend was his relationship with Matthew. It had proved easier than he expected, probably because in Matthew’s mind, their relationship had never suffered in the first place. He was the happiest Lynch, closest to the sun, and he knew no other way to see his brothers than with light. It meant Ronan didn’t have to try as hard, but he did it anyway. He took Matthew out with everyone, with Gansey and Adam and Blue and Noah, forcing them to separate into the BMW while the rest travelled in the Pig. 

It was nice. Ronan never got the chance to drive Matthew anywhere - he usually rode with Declan, if he was going somewhere that Ronan was also going to be - and it was nice. Nice, and weird. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen Matthew in the front passenger seat; growing up, it had been Declan and Ronan fighting over shotgun, if their mother wasn’t going with them. It was a strange sight, but anytime he glanced over to look at Matthew, his younger brother just grinned back, the floof of his hair being blown by the wind that rushed through the window. Matthew was so much like a big, friendly dog, sometimes. He had this habit of rolling the window down and sticking his head out to feel the wind in his face. Ronan could never understand why seeing his brother so happy made his heart hurt so much.

He had thought about inviting Declan, sometimes, when they went places, but the thought was almost always immediately shut down. He wasn’t ready to start looking at his relationship with Declan; part of that was because Ronan knew that the catastrophe that was their brotherhood wasn’t actually entirely his fault. He may have poured the gasoline, but Declan had struck the match and it was going to take a collaborative effort to put out the flames. 

No, Declan would have to wait before Ronan got to him. The next person he needed to make things right with was Gansey; that hadn’t been all Ronan’s fault either, he was sure of it, but he was more invested in trying to fix it. It, too, proved to be deceptively simple. Gansey wanted to be on Ronan’s side, and to him it was Ronan’s fault that he wasn’t. All it took was a little effort on his part to not be as much of a dick for a little while, and it was all mostly okay. There were things he couldn’t fix - the issue of school, for example - but he just avoided addressing those at all. Ronan hated lying more than he hated almost anything, and he wasn’t going to pretend to Gansey that there was any possibility of him finishing school. Best to not talk about it.

Everything else, aside from Declan, was an internal issue, all things that Ronan could only begin to work on by really looking inward. It was the hardest part, and it was going to take the longest amount of time. Recovery didn’t happen overnight. That was something that he understood, but seemed difficult for other people to grasp. One of the first times he relapsed and got shitface drunk, Gansey pointedly said, “I thought you were trying to get better, Ronan.” Declan had said something very similar to him more than once; the two of them combined made Ronan feel like it almost wasn’t worth the effort to try and get better.

That’s when he went and talked to Adam. Even if he never sought him out, it always ended up that way: Ronan, laying with the seat all the way back in the BMW, and Adam clambering into the passenger side to sit with him wordlessly. Ronan wouldn’t open his eyes or greet Adam, but that didn’t matter. They would rarely talk during these occasions - even if Adam tried, Ronan had his music up loud enough to drown out any words - but it helped. Adam almost always helped. He would come in and just let Ronan be Ronan, without any other expectations. 

Ronan had never known how to tell Adam how much that meant to him. He didn’t know how to begin, but he figured not saying, “Get the fuck out of my car, Parrish,” was a good start. Once, when Gansey was being a dick about Ronan’s drinking, Adam had gotten involved. He interjected, loudly, that recovery wasn’t a straight line, and Gansey should  _ know _ that; it was no different than when Gansey left to drive somewhere, anywhere, avoiding the situation. It was no different than when Gansey stayed up all night working on his model of Henrietta instead of his piling schoolwork. It just looked different, and so it _ seemed _ worse, but Adam reminded Gansey in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t just continually getting better, either. Gansey had been indignant, but backed down in the face of Adam’s retribution.

Ronan had appreciated that, too. Adam Parrish was one of the secret things in Ronan’s head that he needed to think about the most, needed to really work through. He had already come to terms with how he felt. It was a matter of coming to terms with coming to terms with it, and it became easier over time - he stopped holding himself back when he was around any of his friends, but especially around Adam; he stopped worrying about what Adam would think if he knew Ronan liked him, because their friendship was stronger than that; he started being more vocal about the things he liked about Adam. Even if Adam had not responded in kind, it would have been fine because they were friends before anything else, but he did. He returned every single one of Ronan’s serves until they had made their own routine of being close, of trading small kisses, of being Adam and Ronan instead of just the two separated.

It wasn’t perfect, and Ronan still had a lot of internalized bullshit to work through, but it was good. It was good  _ because _ it wasn’t perfect. Around the same time his relationship with Adam started to progress in that direction, he was starting to try to patch things up with Declan. He gave him things, now, dreamt things that he knew Declan would appreciate in the sort of way only someone with no magic of their own could. He started trying to be more honest, telling full truths instead of half truths; Declan started to be a little more honest, telling any kind of truth. It was a work in progress.

Eventually, Ronan began to realize that the only relationship he hadn’t at least tried to begin repairing was his relationship with his dad. It took him so long to notice it because it wasn’t immediately obvious - Declan, Matthew, Adam, and Gansey were all people he saw on a regular basis, people he knew in the flesh. Niall Lynch was less than a ghost in Ronan’s life, but his presence - or lack thereof - was obvious in everything that Ronan said and did. For a while, he blamed Declan for the way he felt - if not for the lies and the secrets that Declan had kept, Ronan would never have had to find out all at once. He would have had more time to properly process  the information and find a way to fit it into his rigid image of his father. As it was, he had so many pieces and no room left in his head to put them together.

It was when Ronan started to examine those feelings that things had started to get a little bit worse again. He got mad whenever he thought about the way his father had treated him in a drastically different way from the way he treated Declan; he got angrier when he thought about the way Declan had been forced to grow up; he somehow got even more pissed when he thought about how much his older brother must have resented Niall. None of it made sense, and all of it crashed around in his head, refusing to settle and refusing to still. It was too much to hold in, and the thoughts spilled out of his dreams in the form of things he didn’t want and didn’t know what to do with. Not everything he dreamt was beautiful.

Sometimes, Adam was there to help him with the overflow. Ronan would wake in the night, on the living room couch downstairs, and Adam would be there, ready to help. Most of the time, though, it was Ronan waking up alone, knowing he had dreamt something but being unable to find it. These dreams made Ronan’s relationship with his late father even more strenuous; he didn’t know what to make of everything and he wished that he had had more time. That he had been able to figure things out more. That Niall had never died in the first place.

It didn’t always feel like Niall Lynch  _ had _ actually gone. More nights than he wanted to admit, Ronan dreamt of his father, but it was in his waking life that he saw Niall the most. He saw his father in the mirror as he shaved, in his brothers as they sat together in church, and in the car he drove daily; he saw his father everywhere, but it was in the Barns that Ronan felt he couldn’t  _ escape _ Niall Lynch. Cows lay comatose in the grass and appliances operated without electricity; flowers that no one could identify spread across the land in all seasons; weather that seemed unaffected by the movements of cold and hot fronts, local rain showers passing by the Barns when it hit everywhere else in Virginia. 

Niall was in everything Ronan loved, and it filled him with emotions too complex to cope with in any way other than taking the BMW out on back roads late at night and driving until he was too tired to think about anything anymore. He’d come home before sunrise to find Opal passed out on the couch and things missing or torn or covered in dirt. Sometimes, though, the house would be a little cleaner than that and Adam would be there, half asleep until Ronan came in.

“Did it help?” he had asked once, as Ronan was kicking his boots off by the front door.

“I don’t know,” Ronan had responded, and that had been that. 

They had had conversations, now and then, that were not  _ actually _ about Niall but were close enough to the subject that Adam gleaned information from them regardless. Somehow, he had discovered that Niall’s birthday was coming up (probably from Matthew) and he was being unexpectedly overt about the whole thing. Overt, for Adam, meant that his ‘furtive’ glances were caught more often than not, and Ronan could sense the concern coming from his boyfriend as the days passed by. The morning of Niall’s birthday, a Saturday that Ronan had done his best to keep as normal as possible, he swung by St. Agnes to pick up Adam and drive over to Monmouth. 

This was something they did on most Saturdays, and Ronan was trying to keep this one just as routine as all the rest; when he got there and found everyone gathered outside with what looked like a goddamn picnic spread around them, he knew that it was a completely moot point. While he was pissed off that everyone was determined to get involved with things he would much rather leave inside his head, he corralled his feelings enough to make it through the event. As soon as he could, he made to stand, expecting Adam and Opal to eventually follow. He said his goodbyes, made some excuse about errands for the Barns, and went back to his car.

Adam joined him only long enough to say that Opal wanted to stay with the group, probably interested in terrorizing the non-existent citizens of ‘Minietta’ upstairs. 

“Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” Ronan said without looking at Adam. He kept his eyes focused on the remnants of the picnic ahead. He knew Opal was genuine; a creature like her hadn’t learned lying, yet. He hoped she never did.

“I don’t know what you mean,” came the response through the window.

Adam, unfortunately, had learned to lie before he had learned to walk. Ronan rolled the window up and started the car, barely waiting for Adam to move before backing out of the lot. He drove without any direction or plan in mind; he wasn’t at all surprised to end up in the parking lot of the Barns. He also didn’t find the presence of the eldest Lynch, sitting behind the wheel of his silver car, surprising. Lynches always came home, in the end.


End file.
